November
6, 2005
BARCELONA -- Several months ago, when a group of Spanish Muslims
approached city officials here about sponsoring a conference on
Islamic feminism, one responded, "Isn't that an oxymoron?" That's
what many people believe. To conservative Muslims, the phrase is
an insult to Islam. But to many moderate Muslims -- and I count
myself among them -- an Islamic feminist movement fits with the
religion's early teachings and offers one of our best hopes for
countering extremism. Indeed, those of us who have joined the movement
since it emerged in the 1990s have come to understand that Islam
needs to go back to its progressive 7th-century roots if it is
to move forward into the 21st century.

How difficult that is -- and how important -- became
clear to me when I joined the first International Congress on Islamic
Feminism, which was held in this Spanish city just over a week
ago. When the floor was opened for questions during one session,
a young Muslim man made the comment I've heard so often: "In
Islam, there is no place for feminism. . . . " Sitting on
the dais, where I had just chronicled our successful struggle to
integrate some U.S. mosques, I took it in stride. I've become accustomed
to belittling comments, even death threats. But what happened next
stunned me.

From the middle of the audience of some 250 women
and men, Amina Wadud, a Muslim scholar of Islamic studies who calls
herself "a pro-faith feminist," stood up. "You are
out of order," she said to the man. "What you are doing
is exactly the kind of thing that we are here to be able to stop." The
audience broke into cheers. Another Muslim man tried to protest.
I interrupted him. "We're changing history today," I
said. "We're not going to shut up."

What stunned me was not only the confidence with
which we spoke but the willingness of the group to back us -- 12
Muslim women scholars and activists who had been invited to attend
the conference by a small but ambitious group of largely Spanish
Muslim converts, the moderate Catalan Islamic Board.

The force of our collective effort convinced me
that we have the strength to challenge the men's club that defines
most of the Muslim world. It was an affirmation of the commitment
that had brought me and the 11 other participants here from as
far away as Malaysia, Mali, Nigeria, France, Canada, the United
Kingdom, the United States and refugee camps in the disputed territory
of Western Sahara to share stories from the trenches in the "gender
jihad." We Muslim feminists view it as a struggle that taps
Islamic theology, thinking and history to reclaim rights granted
to women by Islam at its birth but erased by manmade rules and
tribal traditions masquerading as divine law.

In the communities where we live, we have begun
challenging customs that deny women rights from the mosque to the
bedroom: gender segregation, mandatory veiling, forced early marriages,
clitorectomies, polygamy, death for sex outside of marriage, domestic
violence and strict domestic roles. We have many Muslim men on
our side: The chief organizer of the conference was a man, Abdennur
Prado, who hustled nonstop behind the scenes. And we are taking
a lead from Christian and Jewish women who are generations ahead
of us today in their efforts to challenge traditions that block
them from the workplace, the political arena and the pulpit.

To many, we are the bad girls of Islam. But we
are not anti-sharia (Islamic law) or anti-Islam. We use the fundamentals
of Islamic thinking -- the Koran, the Sunnah, or traditions and
sayings of the prophet Muhammad, and ijtihad , or independent reasoning
-- to challenge the ways in which Islam has been distorted by sharia
rulings issued mostly by ultraconservative men.

We are wrestling with laws created in the name
of Islam by men, specifically eight men. The Muslim world of the
21st century is largely defined by eight madhhabs , or Islamic
schools of jurisprudence, with narrow rulings on everything from
criminal law to family law: the Shafi, Hanafi, Maliki and Hanbali
schools in the majority Sunni sect; the Jafari and Zaydi schools,
for the minority Shiite sect; and the Ibadi and Thahiri schools
among other Muslims. But the first centuries of Islam's 1,400-year
history were quite different -- characterized by scores of schools
of jurisprudence, many progressive and women-friendly. It is not
Islam that requires women to wear a headscarf, but rather the scholars
in the contemporary schools.

To many of the women I spoke with, their struggle
to move Islam forward by reaching back to its past represents nothing
short of a revolution. "This is a global struggle," says
Valentine Moghadam, a native of Iran and the chief of the gender
equality and development section of UNESCO in Paris. She sees the
movement as an important response to "frustration with Islamic
fundamentalism." And there is no doubt in my mind, either:
The kind of ideology that willingly subjugates women can also foster
hatred.

From the dais, activists dressed in everything
from Parisian fashion to traditional African batik offered powerful
stories of regional reform. From Malaysia, Zainah Anwar, executive
director of the Sisters in Islam (dubbed "Satan in Islam" by
conservatives), laid out a strategy for reforming Islamic family
law in her country, by, for example, educating women about their
right to refuse forced marriages. And like others, she is looking
beyond her country's borders for support. The group's newsletter
is being funded by the successful multinational cosmetics company
the Body Shop. And the group is calling Moroccan legal experts
to Malaysia next February to educate local leaders about the progressive
family reforms that Morocco passed last year. This month, Anwar
and other Sisters in Islam leaders will go to England to swap strategies
with 10 Muslim women's groups.

In some local areas, groups like Anwar's have begun
to see success. Peeking over her laptop and occasionally adjusting
the flowing white head scarf she chooses to wear, Djingarey Maiga,
the chief of a Mali-based group called Women and Human Rights,
explained how she started a rural radio program in her country
to promote women's rights. And BAOBAB, a Nigerian group founded
in 1996, made headlines in 2003 when it helped win a victory for
Amina Lawal, the mother sentenced to be stoned to death for having
a baby outside of marriage. Mufuliat Fijabi, a senior program officer
at BAOBAB, told us how a conservative sharia judge broke with tradition
not long ago to oppose marital rape after going through training
provided by his organization. One Nigerian imam, after hearing
BAOBAB's message encouraging ijtihad surprised BAOBAB organizers
by following up and encouraging Muslims to consider alternative
schools of thought.

The challenge isn't just in poor villages in Nigeria
or Mali. It's in the wealthy and supposedly well-educated West.
In 2003, I set off a debate over the rights of Muslim women when
I wrote in The Post's Outlook section about walking through the
front door of my hometown mosque in Morgantown, W.Va., and praying
in the main hall, thus defying an order that women enter through
a back door and pray in a secluded balcony. Since then, I've been
harassed in mosques from New York City to Seattle for refusing
to accept separate quarters. After almost two years of public campaigning
with other women, the country's major Muslim organizations, including
the Islamic Society of North America, issued a 28-page report in
July titled, "Women Friendly Mosques and Community Centers:
Working Together to Reclaim Our Heritage," recommending reform,
including an affirmative action program to get women on mosque
boards.

Our movement also caused a stir earlier this year
when Wadud led a congregation of about 125 women and men in a New
York prayer service. As the chief organizer, I wondered what the
impact of her action would be as I unfurled the massive roll of
carpet I'd purchased from the ABC home furnishing store to serve
as our prayer rug. Many clerics around the world attacked us at
fiery Friday sermons for undermining our religion, and Libyan leader
Moammar Gaddafi claimed that our prayer "creates millions
of bin Ladens" by challenging male authority. We're up against
a formidable machinery of opposition, but we're convinced that
now is the moment to coordinate the legal and policy reforms that
Islamic feminism is promoting. Initially, I thought it was time
for a new madhhab. But Islamic scholars have persuaded me that
that would be too limiting. We need to focus instead on broad societal
initiatives.

We see our struggle as part of a wider peace jihad.
It was a national Islamic leader who oversees the Catalan Islamic
Board, Mansur Escudero, who issued the first fatwa against Osama
bin Laden, months before U.S. Muslim organizations issued their
own. The organizers of the conference say they don't Vaccept support
from Saudi Arabia, which has funded much of the spread of ultraconservative
Islamic orthodoxy in the world.

At the Barcelona conference, I proposed a plan
called "The Islamic Dream" -- an effort to connect our
disparate efforts and develop a new approach for Islam in the 21st
century. I would like to see us organize a summit of Islam's progressive
thinkers to establish the terms of reform and define a 20-year
plan to transform our world. That is where we are headed.

During Wadud's presentation on one of the last
days of the conference, a Spanish American woman stood up and asked: "Would
you lead us in prayer today?" Wadud assented. A group of about
30 Muslims gathered in a hotel conference room to pray behind her,men
and women standing shoulder to shoulder -- grounds for banishment
in mosques around the world. A Pakistani Canadian activist, Raheel
Raza, ran to join the line, not far from a Pakistani American scholar,
Asma Barlas, dubbed one of "the mothers of Islamic feminism." Together,
we opened our hands as Wadud prayed, "We ask for Your protection."

Asra Nomani, a former reporter for the Wall Street
Journal, is the author of the book "Standing Alone in Mecca" (HarperSanFrancisco).
For more information, visit HYPERLINK "http://www.asranomani.com" www.asranomani.com